


a sudden chill

by bildungsromantic



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-13
Updated: 2012-11-13
Packaged: 2017-11-18 14:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bildungsromantic/pseuds/bildungsromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It sounds like a line when he says, “You’re worried I’ll break your heart.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	a sudden chill

**Author's Note:**

> beware: this spoils many of the major plot points of skyfall

It ends almost as soon as it starts. Q expected nothing less, of course -- he’s read the silent spaces between the lines in 007’s file and supposes he ought to be relieved that he didn’t end up like Vesper Lynd, like Sévérine, just one more pretty corpse. He hasn’t ended up like Eve Moneypenny, either, whose smile is soft and secret every time Bond leans in close and leaves with a smirk, even though everyone knows that he will never give her as much as she deserves. Now that it’s over Q knows he never ought to have let Bond use him for distraction, never ought to have let Bond get so distracted, but it’s hardly the biggest mistake he’s ever made. After all, with doubts on all sides as to the security of MI6’s network ever since Silva hacked them and Q didn’t even have the decency to see it coming, with M dead and no one -- not Q with all his genius, not even James bloody Bond -- able to prevent it, fucking a double-O hardly registers. It happened only twice. Twice and spare change.

Bond is in Los Angeles for a few days, tracking a drug lord who has been funding terrorist cells in London. The new M has at last allowed him to resume active duty, once all the old tests were run all over again, with better results if not particularly good ones. When Q breaks into Bond’s psychological profile -- he can only conclude that if they put it on the server, they want him to hack it -- he almost laughs at the psychiatrist's notes: _deeply invested in a facade of hypermasculinity . . . refuses to acknowledge trauma or grief over loss of parents or other loved ones . . . masochistic to the point of self-hatred._

_Mr. Bond is so unwilling to show vulnerability that he would walk into certain death just to prove his strength._

No wonder M let him back into the field. These kind of results aren’t a bug in a double-O agent: they’re a feature.

At work, he is the voice, a voice, in Bond’s ear, there to advise, to aid, to keep him from falling asleep. “It’s interesting,” he says today. “The air quality in Los Angeles was once so dismal that some residents of the area didn’t even realize they lived near a mountain range.”

“Q.”

“I suppose you can’t see any mountains at the moment.”

“Not inside a hotel bar, no.”

“Hm. Too bad.”

M’s voice breaks in, impatient: “007, has the target arrived?”

“She’s on her way.”

This M and Bond don’t bite at each other through the line; there is no name-calling, no sharp edge that might be hatred or might be affection. Moneypenny says that’s how things used to be: more ugly and more kind, somehow. But they both know, he and Eve, that cold professionalism has its uses.

Q says, “Once you slip her the tracker -- “

“You have the signal, you tell me where she goes. We find her brother. Now be quiet -- she’s here.”

Through the line Q hears a sweet, melodic voice, and laughter, and the bright ring of two glasses touched together. It should be more unnerving, listening in as Bond charms and flatters and lies, but this is Bond in his best form and Q has never really witnessed it, not even when he was on the receiving end of Bond’s attentions, because the first time was so desperate and stupid, not long after M’s funeral when Bond tried his best not to show up at Moneypenny’s flat and landed in Q branch instead. It would have been best if he’d found a stranger -- maybe he _had_ \-- but he wanted familiarity, that much was obvious, and Q was better than nothing. His thick fingers bit so hard into Q’s back that he thought they’d leave bruises, but they didn’t. He didn’t leave a scratch. After Bond was gone there was no sign that he’d ever been there.

Through the line, there is the wet, slick sound of kissing, and Q amuses himself for a moment imagining M, standing stock-still in his office, horrified with the realization of what he is about to hear: Bond panting and the woman moaning -- Caterina, sometimes called Kitty; her file is open on Q’s computer, the tracking signal blipping soft and red on a map in the corner, though it’s presumably still in Bond’s pocket -- and they haven’t even made it upstairs yet. But M doesn’t say a word. It’s possible Q has underestimated his new boss.

After they’re finished, done gasping and rutting noisily in Q’s ear, there is the sound of Bond’s padding feet, a door shutting, a shower running. Q can picture him in his hotel restroom, naked and sweat-shining and loose-limbed. Not smiling, but soft-mouthed, the cruel quirk settled into something easier.

“It’s done,” Bond says, too much air in his breath.

He’s made the switch: the tracker earring for one of the ones Kitty has worn every day for six years, the last gift of her dead mother. It will lead them straight to her brother and his dirty money, and then all Bond will have to do is persuade him to give up the names of his terrorist contacts. An uncomplicated operation, which is precisely what Bond needs and exactly what he does not want.

M says, “Good work, 007. Q -- let me know _the moment_ that tracker starts to move.”

“Yes, sir.”

Then it’s only Bond and Q on the line. A few seconds pass, and Bond says, “I heard you breathing. The whole time.” And Q can hear the smirk at the edge of the words, but it glimmers, barely there, barely meant. Bond’s joke, whatever it is, doesn’t quite land.

“I’m not sure what your point is, 007.”

When Bond laughs, quiet and caught in the sound of water rushing from the shower, Q remembers his lips, hot as a fired gun against Q’s mouth.

\---

Kitty leaves Bond early -- it’s three in California, eleven in London, and Q is on his third cup of tea. He contacts M, who comes to Q branch in person, to lean over Q’s shoulder and furrow his brow as the tracking signal flares across a map of Los Angeles county.

“She’s leaving the city,” Q tells Bond. “It seems you’ll see the mountains after all.”

Q doesn’t actually give two whits for mountains himself, but, then again, he’s never appreciated confrontations with his own insignificance. Bond, though, is a glutton for punishment. Q suspects he likes feeling small in the face of a world that is vast and brutal.

\---

As expected, the mission goes less pear-shaped than usual, but Bond still manages to come back with a long, hastily-stitched stab wound across his shoulder blade and an impressive black eye. He appears in Q branch after he’s been debriefed, leaning against a desk, Q’s desk, and when he sees Q he cracks his mouth open into a semblance of a grin. “I’ve brought you your toys,” he says.

He hands over his gun, his earpiece, the glittering diamond tracker. Q sees the spot of dried blood on the earring post and for Bond’s sake pretends not to.

“You’re looking a bit worse for the wear,” Q says. “You don’t usually let them at your face.”

“Oh, this?” Bond gestures at the swollen eye, stained violet except for where broken veins bloom out, reddish and thin. “I thought it looked cool.”

“My social standing certainly never improved for a good kicking,” Q says, “but then, no one has ever accused me of being an expert in cool.” With a flashing grin, Q slides past Bond to sign the devices back in, but feels a catch in his cardigan, and then a big hand on his hip.

“Q.”

The second time they fucked, Bond had showed up in Q’s kitchen, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, the crisp white sleeves rolled up his forearms. It was early yet, not quite midnight, but in the dark Bond’s eyes were the color of ice. He kissed slower this time, less fierce, and his hands moved like murmurs across Q’s bare back. It was almost domestic, in Q’s bed, pressed flush against each other so that they shared air and heat and pleasure. The sound Bond made when he came was almost a sob. That’s when Q knew it had to stop.

“Bond,” he says now, low and warning. Half his staff is still in, and it would be idiocy to imagine they aren’t all watching from behind the shields of their computer screens. The last thing Q wants to do is feed the MI6 rumor mill. In his schooldays, when he was even scrawnier and even more hopeless at hiding his smarts than he is now, he stayed alive by staying under the radar, and it’s a strategy that he suspects will continue to work for him if he lets it. He shudders to think what M would say about this. He doesn’t even want to imagine Moneypenny’s reaction.

Bond’s hand drops but his gaze doesn’t. It sounds like a line when he says, “You’re worried I’ll break your heart.” 

Q stares into his swollen face: an old man, brilliant and strong and still handsome, but getting old, starting to crack in places easily seen. He really would rather die than let his vulnerability show, but his poker face isn’t as good as it used to be, and beneath his cool surface, Q sees the pain and the anger, the passion ready to burn him up from the inside out.

“Bond,” he says, gentle as he can. “You know that’s not true.”

Once upon a time Bond might’ve shattered him to pieces, but these days things are different, Bond is different, and Q thinks it’s much more likely to happen the other way around.

\---

Before he broke things off, the morning after that second time, he let Bond kiss him in the light of day. His hands were warm as he cupped Q’s jaw and stroked his thumb across his cheekbone, and in the weight of his gaze Q recognized hope. A tendril of something bright that Bond didn’t know he’d let escape. But Q saw it.

He wasn’t sure who Bond thought he could recreate in Q: Vesper, Eve, M. His parents. Someone he wanted but could not have; someone he tried hard not to love as much as he did. Perhaps inside of Q, Bond hoped to find himself again.

And Q almost let him. He doesn’t mind being a warm mouth or the meaningless comfort James Bond needs to seek between a pair of thighs. He doesn’t mind, still wouldn’t mind, if Bond wanted to lay him out every night and claim his body like a virus. But Q can’t be a patch across his soul’s jagged wounds.

Whatever Bond may pretend to be, he is not heartless. That much is obvious to anyone who saw him in the aftermath of M’s death. He may hold his mouth in a hard line and fuck anything that moves, but Q has read his file, has read his face, and knows that if Vesper or M taught him anything, it is not that nobody is to be trusted: it’s that if he lets his guard down just for a moment, he will believe in love all over again. He’ll believe that love is real.

But Q is cold as Bond’s eyes and he knows better.


End file.
